Two weekends ago, (I promise after this, I'm caught up!) I went to Schneeberg with the Connexxion student ministry from Jena for their spring semester retreat. God really showed me a lot that weekend, and is continuing to show me things as a result of the teaching of John Kelsey (the BSU director for OSU), our speaker for the weekend, and his wife, Jen, who also shared with us, especially with the women. I'll get into that in a minute. First, the fun stuff - and check out Deanna's post for another POV, and some great pics (you might even see me in one or two of them)!
On Saturday evening, we grilled out, Thüringen style! Thüringen men do not use utensils to grill the delicious Thüringen bratwursts. They are just that tough (the men, not the brats). They use their hands. They have a bowl of water that they use to cool off their hands and the bratwursts, and then they just turn them with their hands. It was a sight to see!
After grilling out, we had a talent show hosted by none other than yours truely (for better or worse!). There were some dancing, games, and music . We heard a didgeridoo (sp?), "Angie", a jazzy hymn, and found out who stole the coconuts (this was a song-and-dance - picture a group of people dancing around like monkeys, singing out "Who stole the coconuts?" in German). We found out that you can not buy blue socks on the third floor of the department store, but that electronics move from floor to floor, that telephone-charades are just plain fun, that when they try to make things indeciferable Germans get more educated while Americans get more ghetto (fo' shizzle), and that Chris Tomlin can be played instead of bagpipes for a sword dance ("Your Grace is Enough" - even when you haven't danced in ten years).
I always love getting to spend time with students, and this is a great group. They have great leadership, and it shows. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was small group time. It was a great time to get to know some of them better, to encourage each other, and to learn how to pray for them.
I just want to write about one thing that I really took away with me from the retreat. One of the things that Kels talked about was spiritual disciplines. As a group, we came up with a list of spiritual discipline; Bible reading, scripture memorization and meditation, worship, prayer, tithing, fasting, serving, silence, journaling. And fellowship. Fellowship. I never thought of fellowship as a discipline. I just thought it was a fringe benefit of being in a community of believers. The word "discipline" just doesn't sound fun to me, but fellowship does. So do worship and journaling, and some others, but none come close to fellowship on the fun scale for me. As some of you know, I was pretty homesick during the first few months of my time here in Germany, and I spent a lot of time on the phone with friends and family. Some people, I spoke with more often while I was in Germany than I did when I was in Knoxville, in the same city as them!
For the last few months however, maybe two or three, I haven't been calling home as much. And during that same period of time, I've sort of slid into what one of my friends calls "the funk". Not exactly a valley, but definitely not the mountain top. Not passionate. Maybe lukewarm is the word. And I hated it. But I didn't know what was causing it, and I didn't know how to get out of it. I read the Bible some, but that didn't pull me back up like it usually does. It was like I was in a fog. I had some great times, like in Willingen for WE Gather, but for the most part I was lukewarm, I saw it, I hated it, I prayed about it, but I didn't know what was out of whack. It took someone else pointing it out to me.
Martha Moore, a staff member from Connexxion drove me to the train station after the retreat was over, so that I could head back to Chemnitz, and she was asking me questions about the weekend; what I thought, what I had learned, highlights, that sort of thing. I just told her that I had a really great time being with the students just as I always do, and that I really missed having that kind of group of people to spend time with, and I really missed having those kind of friends in the same city. And she drew my attention to the fact that I am really lacking in fellowship with my peers here in Chemnitz. I hadn't really thought about it before, but she was right. I have my team mates here, but they are all have room mates, are at least twenty years older than me, and are married with children. Not exactly my peers. I realized that I've made myself a "Lone Ranger christian" (although I hate that phrase) - I'm surrounded by lost people, and not getting the support and encouragement that I need to sustain me.
A few years ago, I had heard someone say that if you could draw a graph of your walk with God, and another graph of your friendships/relationships with other people, the two will parallel each other. Well, since I've not been talking with my friends back home so much, things have gone downhill. And I realized that calling home, or blogging, or IMing isn't so much an indulgence for me as it is a survival tool (when used appropriately and in moderation). So I'm trying to get back into the swing of talking with my friends more regularly (man, it's such torture! ), and I think that I see the fog beginning to lift.
relying not upon my own strength
